1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for allocating or migrating workloads to hardware to use energy efficiency as a factor in selecting hardware. More specifically, the present invention relates to obtaining energy profiles for one or more servers so that a lowest energy use per computer operation may be selected.
2. Description of the Related Art
Modern uses of networked computers leverage flexibility to migrate or initially assign workloads among servers in a data center. A workload is one or more processes executing on one or more processors that share a common motherboard and/or bus system. Each process may run continuously to support a function, and may periodically spawn additional processes in an ad hoc manner. Each process may coordinate handling of work by coordinating execution on processors on a separate data processing system on a separate motherboard from where the process is executing. Accordingly, the workload can be multiple processes executing on multiple servers in a coordinated matter to process data.
A workload distributor is a data processing system that assigns and dispatches workloads to servers under its control. The conventional workload distributors account for resource requirements established by a customer to the data center and assign servers to accommodate throughput requirements as well as provide, if required, an appropriately sized cushion of excess capacity to permit rapid bursts in process activity to be timely handled by the assigned server.
Recently, servers have been offered that permit controlled degradation of performance in favor of reducing the energy consumed by the server. In addition, some servers can be placed in a very low power state if workloads can be transferred off the server or otherwise idled. Nevertheless, such servers may be responsive to being assigned new loads with some latency period to transition from low power.
Importantly, newer servers added to a data center can have energy profiles that offer higher workload throughput per watt of energy consumed as compared to legacy servers in the data center. Accordingly, where a disparity exists in power consumed per machine operation, a cost savings may occur when a workload is dispatched to a new server as compared to a legacy server offering a lower throughput per watt.